The La Colonia Market offers needy households cheery access to free, nutritious food. The food pantry opened recently in an unincorporated poor neighborhood near Anaheim and is a collaboration between Second Harvest Food Bank and Community Action Partnership Orange County. (Photo courtesy of Second Harvest Food Bank)

La Colonia Market opened quietly late last month, providing free food to those in need who live in a poor, unincorporated county area bordered by Anaheim, Garden Grove and Stanton.

On Thursday, Dec. 7, the 15-by-20-foot food pantry will be introduced to the community at a grand opening.

The La Colonia Market in an unincorporated poor neighborhood near Anaheim is a new food pantry that Second Harvest Food Bank and Community Action Partnership Orange County have opened to provide free, nutritious food. (Photo courtesy of Second Harvest Food Bank)

The La Colonia Market offers needy households cheery access to free, nutritious food. The food pantry opened recently in an unincorporated poor neighborhood near Anaheim and is a collaboration between Second Harvest Food Bank and Community Action Partnership Orange County. (Photo courtesy of Second Harvest Food Bank)

The La Colonia Market offers needy households cheery access to free, nutritious food. The food pantry opened recently in an unincorporated poor neighborhood near Anaheim and is a collaboration between Second Harvest Food Bank and Community Action Partnership Orange County. (Photo courtesy of Second Harvest Food Bank)

La Colonia Market, which opened Nov. 20, is the third such community market — or permanent food pantry — launched in the past two years by Second Harvest Food Bank. The concept allows people to browse the cheery pantry and select fresh produce and other food items on their own rather than be handed an already packed bag or box of groceries.

But La Colonia Market is a little different from the Second Harvest community markets affiliated with schools in Anaheim and Santa Ana. This time, Second Harvest is partnering with the county’s other food bank operator, Community Action Partnership of Orange County, which is housing La Colonia Market in the Anaheim Independencia Family Resource Center.

The La Colonia Independencia neighborhood is a generations-old Latino immigrant community near Katella Avenue and Gilbert Street, part of the so-called Anaheim Island made up of several unincorporated neighborhoods.

Most of the people who will be served by the free food market named after the neighborhood will be working poor individuals and families, a part of the more than 315,000 people in Orange County at risk of hunger, according to Second Harvest and Community Action Partnership. So far, 119 households are accessing the food at La Colonia Market.

Occupying a converted weight room at the resource center and open four days a week, La Colonia Market initially will serve the 500 families already receiving a monthly distribution of surplus commodities from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But eventually, the market is expected to expand its reach to perhaps twice as many households, said Dorothy Barrett, director of community partnerships and services for Community Action Partnership, which runs the Orange County Food Bank in Garden Grove.

“It will be open to all of our neighbors,” Barrett said of La Colonia, but she emphasized that the growth will happen slowly by adding about 100 clients a month.

As at the other Second Harvest community markets, visitors must sign up to access the goods at La Colonia and can only come at an appointed individual time. They will be able to choose from a variety of nutritious items — vegetables and fruit, meat and dairy, cereals, grains, and canned goods. Most of the food is rescued by Second Harvest from sources such as restaurants and grocery stores.

Having a steady, reliable supply of fresh produce also sets the community market apart from the USDA commodities program and the limited produce offerings available at OC Food Bank, Barrett said.

“This is more of a shopping environment,” she said. “They can augment what they already are getting with items they otherwise wouldn’t have gotten.”

Community Action Partnership and Second Harvest, Orange County’s largest food bank, have worked together for decades on commodities distribution programs to relieve hunger among low-income families and individuals, and senior citizens, in local communities. But La Colonia Market is the biggest collaboration to date between the two food bank operators.

Second Harvest stepped up its effort to bring more nutritious food to at-risk residents by locating the permanent pantries in poor neighborhoods, using such indicators as schools with a high percentage of students receiving free or reduced-price meals and Orange County United Way’s financial instability heat map from the 2017 Community Indicators report.

Beyond fighting hunger, the goal is to provide a dignified experience to visitors of the community markets.

Second Harvest opened its first permanent pantry in Anaheim in late 2015 at Lincoln Elementary School. It’s named the Lions Den after the school’s mascot and serves about 70 families a day during the school year out of a converted storage room in the campus multi-purpose center. The second one, Mercado El Sol, began operating this summer on property leased by El Sol Science & Arts Academy public charter school in Santa Ana.

La Colonia Market, like El Sol, will operate year-round and is open some evening hours.

For more information, call Anaheim Independencia Family Resource Center at 714-826-9070 and ask about La Colonia Market, or contact the Second Harvest food assistance helpline at 855-233-3362.

Theresa Walker is a Southern California native who has been a staff writer at The Orange County Register since 1992. She specializes in human interest stories and social issues, such as homelessness. She also covers nonprofits and philanthropy in Orange County. She loves telling stories about ordinary people who do the extraordinary in their communities.

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